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26

Count Your Blessings

T he car weaved behind multiple secured entrances in the parking garage under the Varian Family Hospital. The SUV charged at a concrete wall. Marisol searched for her seatbelt. Without it, she hugged Vincent and braced for impact. If he wasn’t half passed out from his own wounds, Tobias should grab the wheel. Open your eyes, Tobias! Open—in a microsecond, the wall ascended magically, revealing a hidden world within.

Weak, incandescent lights illuminated a storage room. Rather, an abandoned storage room strewn with old hospital furniture, laundry carts of faded scrubs and hospital gowns, and other odds and ends yet to be explored. Why did Staci bring them to this forgotten place?

Tobias helped Marisol drag a gurney out from the pile, though he winced and limped as he did. After they opened the hatch of the SUV, they counted to three and lifted Vincent onto the gurney. He flopped like a rag doll.

“How are his vitals?” Tobias asked.

Marisol pressed against the ulnar artery at Vincent’s wrist. His pulse, a beautiful, steady rhythm, lulled like lapping water, and his chest expanded gently as he breathed. “They’re good.”

Tobias opened drawers in search of supplies. He remarked that one drawer had a bloody handprint as he opened it and asked, “Do we need forceps the size of a watermelon?”

“No,” Marisol replied, joining him to search for supplies. The first one she opened had expired latex gloves and a thread and needle. Tobias found tape, gauze, and silver nitrate. She collected it in a plastic tub and set it near Vincent’s feet.

Tobias opened the latched handle of a buzzing refrigerator. From it, he fished out an old polka-dotted ice bag and held it against his swollen eye. Marisol tested a few pairs of gloves before she finally found a pair that didn’t disintegrate.

They needed water, but calcium and lime coated the basement’s only sink and choked access to the faucet. The only knob Marisol managed to turn was for cold water. She first sipped the water and then washed her hands with a dried-out block of soap that barely lathered.

Tobias flipped Vincent onto his stomach. From there, Marisol removed his souped-up wetsuit of a uniform, noticing small scars over his torso from bullet wounds and slashes. What had Ruthven done to him? Gloves on, Marisol dried one gash with gauze. As she applied the silver nitrate, she winced as it cauterized the wound. But Vincent breathed and slept. Count on him for making perpetual pain beautiful. She repeated drying and cauterizing until the bleeding stopped.

She stitched him together. When the needle poked through his skin, she pictured him flinching. The pads of her sore fingers stroked affirmations. I will heal you, my love. I will make you stronger, they said. She stitched and caressed, sewed and gentled him until the sewn-up gashes looked like a large fist holding three drooping flowers. She wrapped the strange shape in gauze, binding it over his shoulder with tape. When she finished, Vincent resembled the city’s sorriest patient, tied in a hospital gown and a threadbare sheet tucked around him.

On the other side of the storage room, Tobias paced the perimeter and discovered an alcove with a shower head. He turned it on. The pipes puffed and shook before releasing a steady stream. “We got warm water.”

Marisol broke away from Vincent’s side, ripping up another hospital gown. After gathering the hot water in the plastic tub, she returned to Vincent and wiped his head with her makeshift rag.

While she worked, Tobias lugged a plastic-coated couch from the pile of furniture, hooking one arm under it as the other cradled his ribs. He plopped it across from Vincent’s hospital bed, wiped the seat, and collapsed into it, spreading his knees apart and stretching his legs. Settled, he ripped off his bullet-proof vest and loosened the zipper of his neoprene shirt.

Marisol ran the wet cloth over Vincent’s hair and dabbed away the blood in it. “We should get him upstairs for better care, though I’m not sure how we would explain him.”

Tobias rubbed at his chin. “If his powers work like they should, he just needs some extra time to repair. Who knows how long he hung there?” Scratching the back of his head, he muttered, “Or how long he tortured him?”

She gripped her chest in personal torment. How much longer would it have been if she hadn’t trusted her instincts? If Tobias hadn’t helped her? She’d clean the blood and grime from his face, neck, and arms until it washed away her guilt for doubting him or herself.

Tobias said, “You need a break, and not a chemically induced one.”

She bit her tongue and said, “Hm,” which stopped her from saying I’m fine, a lie so oft repeated, it came like a reflex.

“You could use a shower and a change of clothes. Trust me, you’re ripe.”

Seconds ticked by as she weighed wiping another smudge from his skin against smelling presentable. Draping the pink-stained rag on the bed’s railing, she pulled herself from Vincent’s side but hesitated after each step. Creating too much space between them, she feared, would somehow lose him again.

But her steps quickened until she made it around the shower alcove, where she found a travel-sized bar of soap among a stack of dust-laden supplies. From her hair to her toes, she scrubbed with the tiny bar of soap. A sudsy touch confirmed her neck was tender from Ruthven’s chokehold. Her own ice pack would be great. Though judging from Tobias’s bruises, he needed the world’s supply of them. She dried off with a bedsheet and changed into faded scrubs. Every pair was too big for her, so the pants pooled at her feet and the shirt slung off her shoulder.

When she rounded the corner of the shower, untangling her wet hair with her fingers, she watched Tobias sit next to Vincent in the hospital bed. He bowed his head, holding Vincent’s hand between his palms. Tobias touched his fingers to his head, chest, his left shoulder, and then his right before gently setting Vincent’s hand back on the bed. Praying. He opened his eyes and lifted his head. The moment he saw Marisol, he scrambled back to his spot on the couch.

She padded across the basement and joined him, sitting a cushion away. “I needed that.” She tugged at the shoulders of her shirt. “Only wish I could wear my clothes. For once.”

Tobias opened his mouth, making nothing but a glottal sound. Was he embarrassed because he had been praying? Tension ratcheted with each drip of the faucet, marking the silence like a metronome. The pause between the droplets begged for conversation.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows against his knees. His focus honed on Vincent. “Why’d you change the plan?”

The plan to spring Vincent? She tilted her head. It seemed obvious to her—to save Tobias too.

With his voice low and serious, he continued, “You could’ve died taking him on. If you followed the plan—”

If she had just left with Vincent, the Bloodsucker would’ve obliterated Tobias. He had to have known that… Oh God, had he expected to die? She swiveled to face him. “Ever occur to you that you’re a part of the plan?”

He moved his gaze to the fizzling light above them, focusing on anything, it seemed, to avoid looking at her. With a grunt, he arched his back into the couch. Still, he didn’t look at her. àpropos of nothing, he said, “I went to an AA meeting once. Hung out at the back because everyone sounded like freaks. You should’ve heard what they did for a drink. Sure, I went through a divorce, but it wasn’t because I was—”

“An alcoholic?”

“Right.” He clenched and unclenched his jaw a few times. “But this guy leaves the front of the meeting and sits near the back with me. He asks if I recognized him. When I worked a beat, I saw a lot of faces, and I racked my brain to remember him until it clicked. He was a drunk I had picked up off a curb, and instead of bringing him down, I drove him home to his row house on the Westside. So, I’m drinking watery coffee with this guy, and he tells me he keeps a picture of one of his daughters in a spot to always remind him why he quit. A picture of his eldest daughter, the fighter, who was so smart, fierce, and generous that he couldn’t quite figure out how he had any hand in making her. ‘She has enough heart to carry this whole city out of Hell on her back,’ he said.”

The foolish hyperbole sounded like her dad.

“I figured I could do the same—put a picture up and make a promise to myself, to her.”

It dawned on her—the picture in his kitchen with the curly brown hair and freckles? “That picture’s your daughter! Why didn’t you tell me? I’m so sorry. I cracked a joke like a total jerk.”

“You can be a total jerk, kid, but I like that about you. It reminds me you aren’t perfect.”

She turned the corner of her mouth in a crooked smile.

“We had her young, the ex and I, and married because that’s what we thought you’re supposed to do, but all I left room for were the three w’s: work, whiskey, and women. For that, I lost my wife, but I never wanted to lose her. When she was old enough to call the shots, she didn’t want to see me anymore, and after a few cases wrecked my visitation weekends, I agreed. She already called her stepdad, ‘Dad,’ for Chrissakes.” He dropped the ice bag, and the thud reverberated through the room. “I couldn’t be like that guy at the meeting. He didn’t give up. I gave up. Last year, I left her graduation with a married woman only to wind up alone under an overpass, drinking a cheap pint of rye. And I keep thinking that someday I’ll quit, someday I’ll be good enough to face her, to apologize, to be more than a sperm donor, but when is that someday gonna be, my deathbed?”

Marisol shrugged. Did he want her to feel sorry for him and provide comfort? She wasn’t sure if she could. Instead, wariness knotted into her. She hadn’t forgiven Dad for his failures and held on to them like her childhood home’s plaster scars. And of course, it may be well after his deathbed before she would ever forgive Caz.

He sniffed and brushed his good eye with a knuckle. “But you believe in me when you got no reason to, and I get these crazy ideas like I could call her up, apologize and mean it, and maybe she’ll even let me sit in a decent row at her wedding. And it’s because of you. How’s that for twenty years of pent-up confessions?”

Marisol faked a laugh because there was Tobias, reaching ridiculous conclusions about her again. “That’ll be three Hail Mary’s. One to mess up, the other for practice, and the final one to forgive yourself because you can be better.” The knots inside her loosened.

He lifted his head and caught her gaze with one shining eye. “You’re what men write poetry about. ”

Her lips mouthed, “Oh,” and she looked at her hands, hoping some token of appreciation would appear in her palms. But she had nothing. If only regenerative powers radiated from her hands. Not simply to ease the swelling of his bruises with a gentle graze of her fingers, but to hold her hand against his heart, make sure he never experienced an ounce of pain the rest of his life because those were the things he deserved.

But she had nothing, so she studied Vincent and watched his bandaged back rise and fall as he slept. That is, she had nothing but the truth. “I thought you were him,” she blurted, as if brevity alone could stop the impact. “When I kissed you, I thought I was kissing the Patron Saint. And the night of the attack? I didn’t stand you up because of it. I thought I had met up with you as the Patron Saint, but it was him.”

Tobias sighed and stared at the ground. His unobstructed pupil shifted rapidly from side to side, as if he calculated the weight of what she had told him. In borrowed clothes, Tobias easily became Vincent. Both faced an unending battle for Justice, and both needed to stand on the side of good. It’d be simple to say that the good pieces about Tobias made him like Vincent, but something in her said that when Vincent dressed up to fight for Justice, that a part of him became Tobias too.

He scraped his fingernails against his thick stubble. “That’s stupid. We look nothing alike. ”

“Stupid is right.” She’d accept stupid. That was enough for her. But for him? “My mom thinks you’re cute.”

“Me and Novotny women go together like peanut butter and jelly.”

“Cinnamon and sugar.”

“Coffee and doughnuts.”

In the middle of laughing, the horrifying conclusion tensed in every one of her muscles. “But stay away from my sister.” It was one thing for Mom to mine ounces of glee watching Tobias replace a lightbulb; it was quite another imagining Nicole vaulting over a problematic age gap with a flirty quip.

He placed his sweaty hand on the top of her foot. The warmth echoed. “It’s enough.” She listened to his breathing. It synced with Vincent’s.

The clamor of the rickety gurney caught her attention as Vincent shifted on to his back and groaned. Marisol sprung to his side.

His eyelids fluttered open, and his irises fluctuated. Finally, he grinned. The pointed corners of his mouth grew wicked and assured. “You love me.”

“I do.” Marisol smiled and blinked a few tears away. They trickled down her cheeks to her chin. Vincent brushed the underside of her jawline, catching the tears in his hand. When she lifted her chin as he touched it, he moved his fingers to her neck .

“Bruises.” He traced the line of her tendon. “I’m sorry.”

“Wasn’t your fault,” she hoarsely said and stared at his feet. If she looked at him, the look he was giving her—the love in his eyes would prod her open, and she wouldn’t stop crying.

“I should’ve known how powerful he could be from your warning. You shouldn’t have had to—” Vincent’s mouth gaped and then relaxed as the battered Tobias limped to his other side. “Quinlan.” Vincent extended his hand.

Tobias shook it. “Vinnie.”

They held their handshake. The hair on Tobias’s arm stood straight from Vincent’s touch. Their eyes darkened and shimmered with a palpable intensity, switching the handshake from a sign of gratitude to a pair of opponents sizing each other up before a fight. Marisol flexed her hand, ready to karate chop them apart. Then Tobias blinked, and they dropped it. Instead of looking ready to rip each other’s throats, they smirked.

They had worked together years before she entered the picture. How many news stories hid their collaboration between the lines? She and Vincent had become so intertwined in such a short amount of time that someone knowing him longer, however superficially, aroused a tinge of jealousy. She lifted his hand to her face and kissed the inside of his wrist—their own secret handshake.

“I’ll let you two have a moment. I’m showering. No peeking.” Tobias raised his eyebrows at Marisol. She snorted in protest. “Especially you,” he said to Vincent.

Vincent lifted an eyebrow and smiled. His lips curled like those of a cat that just cornered a mouse. But in actuality, it was the smile of playboy Vincent Varian, who got whatever he wanted. His amused yet predatory eyes locked onto Tobias until he disappeared around the alcove.

If they were this friendly, now might be a good time for Vincent to know about her mistake. “There was a time where I thought he was you.”

“I know.”

“You knew?”

Vincent blinked and nodded, emphasizing his long eyelashes. Then his gentle demeanor stretched into a smirk. “For curiosity’s sake, when in the timeline did you realize that he wasn’t…”

Easy. “At the hideaway.”

His smug expression pickled with concern. “We kissed before then.”

The confident nod of her head stopped as she winced. That she couldn’t—at one time—know the difference between his remarkable mouth and tongue versus Tobias’s—ahem!—skills would kind of put a damper on the romantic moment, so she set her gaze on scorching. “Even in the dark, I would know the curves of your lips, the playful games of your tongue, and the little hum you make when I give it to you good. ”

He flicked his eyebrows up, impressed, and curved a finger into a come-hither motion. She lowered her head to meet his lips. He parted her lips with his tongue, and she met the tempting circling of his tongue with her own.

She knew more than the details of his kiss because he made her feel understood. Within her, a creator wrote a secret code only he could unlock and vice versa. Words like complete or the one were too reductive, overlooking that life endowed both with independent and whole livelihoods. By intertwining their strengths like rope, they had become indestructible and absolute. And the only word for it was understood .

Limb by limb, she joined him on the gurney until her body was flush to his. “Do you also know how much you need me?”

“Hm.”

“I want nothing but joy and happiness for you,” she whispered, lifting his chin with her hand. “I will be your spirit and share your burdens. I will be your hope when you have seen nothing but darkness. I will turn your wrath to righteous fury. I will help us achieve the Justice that will free you.” She ran her thumb over his lips in the shape of a cross, her blessing.

Their knees touched; they lay in perfect parallel, leaving room only for their breath. Marisol motioned with her index finger for a kiss. He obliged all too well, skillfully crushing his mouth against hers. A subtle rocking of his hips demanded more.

She pushed him away. Good judgment said to leave well enough alone. He was injured. Tobias would finish his shower any minute now. But Vincent rubbed under her shirt, from her waist to her hip, grazing under the edge of her drawstring waistband.

Many times before, when life’s struggles seemed insurmountable, she’d lose herself, believing her desires were the last to matter. Though the Bloodsucker bruised, battered, and scarred their bodies, he had no claim on them, no place here. Their bodies were theirs alone. Only love belonged here. And she needed to believe it down to her marrow. She touched her nose to Vincent’s and nodded.

Vincent kissed a trail from her cheekbone, neck, shoulder, flank. He descended, lower and lower. At her hip, he tugged her pants down with each kiss, slowly as not to make a sound. She lifted her hips enough to lower the waistband under her ass. He kissed the underside of her cheek. Her skin so sensitive, Marisol held her breath to stifle a moan.

Vincent pulled the blanket over her exposed backside. Good, he prevented an unfortunate view if Tobias happened to walk in. She scooted onto her back. He braced himself above her with one arm, the other disappeared under the blanket. His fingers journeyed down the crease of her thigh and honed on the wet heat pooling below. He stroked, glancing over her clit. She hummed and writhed.

“ Sh! ” But a grin accompanied his reproach. This was the game: be quiet and still when she yearned for anything but.

And she was ready to play. As she kissed him, leisurely running her tongue over his, she gathered the hem of his hospital gown and drew it over his waist. His erection poked into her hip. She licked her palm and ran it from his base to the head of his shaft. Her thumb smeared the liquid pearled there. He leaned his forehead against hers and groaned. Loudly.

“You shh! ” she whispered.

He let out a breathy laugh as he nudged his way into her, centimeter by centimeter. The slow sensation pulled her into a tight ache. She wanted to be filled completely, but he kept the drive of his hips shallow and slow, dragging the flared tip of his cock across the front of her inner walls.

A mist of sweat. A flash of heat. She needed to squeeze her eyes shut to control the devastating torrent. But she watched for Tobias in her periphery. If he found her like this, his heart would break. Wouldn’t it?

The muscles inside her fluttered, her orgasm more-than looming. It was going to detonate. From sweet, shallow thrusts. From the ruse of holding back. From being whole and alive… because they saved each other… because she loved him utterly. She loved him, removed from his lake sanctuary and ominous estate. She loved him without the mask, cape, and gadgets. She loved him.

Vincent cradled her head and drove in all the way. Marisol suppressed a cry, biting into the unbandaged flesh above his heart. “Your turn,” she breathed into his neck.

“Ay,” he rasped. But the shower shut off. Vincent stopped, remaining inside her. The lack of friction tortured her back from reaching the edge again. The once exploded bomb inside defused—for now. Tobias had to take at least some time to dry and dress.

Vincent thrust deeply with deliberate strokes and muted his moans by kissing her temple and ear. Under her grip, his shoulder muscles tensed tighter and tighter. The gurney creaked louder and louder. A final thrust like a jump. Silence like a fall. And then? Landing. Vincent collapsed, pressing his entire weight into her. A throaty sigh, hot against her neck, was the only sound he made as he came. Through the halo of golden curls, she saw a shadow moving in the alcove.

Vincent withdrew. Before she could whimper from feeling empty, he lowered his hand between them. “One more for me.” He stroked her in circles, mixing with their sweat, her arousal, his seed into the slickest lubricant. So sensitive, another movement would push her over the precipice.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

“Can’t what?” Vincent pinched her clit between his fingers. Everything in her body drew tight, and she snapped, holding the orgasmic wail in the strained tendons of her neck.

She caressed the back of her calf with his foot. Her lips vibrated with the m of more.

“Will someone please punch me in the other eye?” Tobias asked. He stood at the entrance of the alcove in too-small scrubs, drying his hair with a rag.

Marisol jackknifed up and adjusted her pants under the cover of the blanket. She combed through her hair with her fingers to pretend nothing happened, hiding the shudders as she came down. Embarrassment bloomed next to the not-yet faded fervor smacked across her cheeks.

Vincent found the rag-stained pink with his blood hanging off the rail of the gurney. He began wiping his hands with it, matter-of-factly, like they were smudged spectacles. “Don’t feel like you have to knock, Quinlan.”

Tobias flopped back onto the sofa. “Would now be a good time to talk about some ground rules when we’re sharing close quarters?”

“Any suggestions? I’ve got nothing.” Vincent’s eyes glowed unabashedly.

“How about keeping the hanky-panky to a minimum?”

“That was me at my minimum.” Vincent licked at his plump bottom lip and rubbed it over his top one .

Marisol raised her hand. “I have a suggestion. How about minding your own business?”

Tobias’s good eye sparkled. “Touché.”

Damn. Not only did his heart withstand breaking, but that spark also said he enjoyed it. She aimed to dart to the safety of the shower alcove, except the rush of blood from her pelvis back to her limbs almost took her back down, and she wobbled toward the lair’s shower and only hiding spot. Of course she cleaned up, put on another pair of pants, but here, she could smile, sigh, laugh as traces of Vincent pinged from nerve to nerve.

When she emerged, Tobias stretched his legs across the cushions and shook out a dusty blanket.

“You’re staying the night?” she asked.

The plastic crinkled under his weight as he moved on the couch. “Appears so. I want at least someone around in case I don’t wake up, you know, if I happen to be severely concussed.”

“That’s actually a common misconception. You can sleep with a concussion,” she said as she nestled against Vincent in the rickety bed.

“I know, but it’d be wrong to leave.”

“It’s safer here,” Vincent said. “Staci, the lights!”

The room went dark. Marisol closed her eyes and hugged Vincent to her. With Vincent in her arms, she felt blessed.